Citing a lack of evidence, representatives from the Putnam County Board of Elections opted not to attend a public event Sept. 27 at the Putnam County Golf Course in Mahopac, hosted by a nonprofit organization that claims to have documentation of thousands of voter roll anomalies comprising roughly 10 percent of the county’s voter registration database.
“From the very beginning of our integrity inquiry, Putnam County BOE has not only ignored our findings, but seems to actively avoid any effort to reconcile these voter roll anomalies in Putnam County,” said New York Citizens Audit Executive Director Marly Hornik. “I thought they would be interested in their statutory duty, but perhaps not.”
According to NYCA, the Putnam County Board of Elections canceled a private meeting with the organization the night before it was scheduled, citing a lack of proof of its serious accusations.
“The fact that you have nothing to give us to back up all the claims your organization has made, is troubling,” wrote Putnam Elections Commissioner Cathy Croft in a letter to NYCA.
New York Citizens Audit is a non-partisan organization concerned with the integrity of New York voter rolls. After two years’ work, it has presented thousands of alleged voter roll anomalies in each county and at the New York State BOE.
According to the organization, it has provided more than 5 million apparent registration violations and nearly 750,000 seeming illegal votes from New York’s 2022 general election to the state BOE for a line-by-line reconciliation.
“We are not saying these anomalies represent fraud,” Hornik told the standing-room-only crowd. “We are not saying that elections are per se invalid. We are saying these need to be investigated and explained, one by one. Without confidence that the voter rolls are clean, NYCA shares the view of the Department of Justice that no election in New York can be legally certified. So, this is serious business.”
Using the Freedom of Information Law, NYCA claims it requested official copies of state and county databases directly from those responsible for maintaining them, examined the official records, and extracted the anomalies from them.
“This is extremely serious business,” said Hornik. “New York State BOE has not responded, despite data that appears to reflect a massive number of irregularities. NYCA has further sought an investigation of an apparent algorithm in the rolls injecting synthetic voters, the large discrepancy between the votes counted and the voters who voted, and the non-compliant registered voters permitted to vote. Still nothing.”
NYCA has since submitted the same investigative package to the Department of Homeland Security, the DOJ Public Integrity Office, the FBI and the Special Investigations Unit of New York State Police. NYCA has also stated its intent to seek a congressional investigation.
“If this data is accurate, it is a massive case of voter suppression,” said Hornik. “I guess ‘voter suppression’ is only important if picked up as a political slogan. This is not good for democracy in New York. Voter registration rolls are the essence of American democracy. If the rolls are dirty, there is no assurance that the vote is clean. If the rolls are clean, New Yorkers can have confidence that the vote process is clean. Any anomaly is dangerous to democracy and confidence in the vote.”
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